Is the Zika Virus Outbreak Expected to Lower Cost of Flights to South America?

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Update: Even while declaring an international public health emergency, the WHO are not advising against travel, so the size of any impact is likely to be pretty modest:

The Committee found no public health justification for restrictions on travel or trade to prevent the spread of Zika virus.

At present, the most important protective measures are the control of mosquito populations and the prevention of mosquito bites in at-risk individuals, especially pregnant women.

tldr It's very unpredictable and could go either way - probably a little bit of both.

Based on my experience of such things, it'll fluctuate as the supply and demand fluctuate. It's likely to go down, then up, then down but not as much as it went up - but the amounts, or amounts of time taken in each phase, could be barely noticeable, could be dramatic, and will almost certainly vary between airlines. Here's a typical pattern:

  • I'd expect prices to drop initially for some airlines, as demand drops but supply (number of planes, number of seats) stays constant. How much depends on how steeply demand drops and how quickly airlines respond by adjusting supply - it might be very small, or it might be sharp, and it'll probably vary by airline. For example, during the Arab Spring, many airlines barely adjusted prices at all (I believe they just swapped in smaller planes and/or reduced schedules), but some had big discounts or flight sales (I got a very carefully timed very cheap trip to Egypt in with BMI who slashed prices to the middle east by about half)
  • This may be followed by an increase in prices, as supply reduces to match lower demand, and prices adjust to the fact the new market includes fewer noncommittal price-sensitive customers and more customers who need to travel. This happened in quite a big way with Ebola - most airlines pulled out, and the few who remained had a captive market.
  • It's not uncommon for there to then be another adjustment downwards, as other companies spot an opportunity to undercut this expensive market and still make a comfortable profit. Royal Air Maroc did a strong trade heavily undercutting the other airlines flying into Ebola countries, for example - but were constantly adjusting the number of flights per week to ensure their planes were mostly full and their tight margins weren't exceeded, which can be inconvenient if your flight date is moved at the last minute.

However, these examples are extreme cases. It's quite likely zika will have a much smaller impact than Ebola or the Arab Spring.

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Not the expert in this field, but in my opinion, prices will not go down. Oil prices went down big time, and ticket prices didn't change a bit. Other epidemics in the past few years did not end up making ticket prices lower.

What happens is, people are scared to go to Latin America, fine! airlines will simply make flights less to that part, and see where do people want to spend their vacations now, and add more flights to the new destinations! no one needs to make ticket prices lower.

An example, when the Arab spring started (a name for the revolution that took place an various Arab countries), Middle Eastern airlines changed their routes a bit, more flights to Europe and the far East, less flights to Egypt, Tunis, Syria. Ticket prices were never reduced, not even a cent, but since people changed their regular holidays destinations, airlines did as well.

Bottom line, IMO, airlines just started making some money because of the oil prices do you think a zika virus will make them lose that? I didn't think so. It's just changing the routes to where people demand.

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